May 2022 Volume 4

PRESIDENT'S NOTE

President's Note

valuation. Like the FIA’s Orders & Shipments survey, it is intended that the FIA Financial Ratios survey will be handled by a third party (FIA staff will not handle data) providing the best approach for security, and all participants will remain confidential. A subcommittee is forming to discuss this survey. If you are interested in participating, please contact me. Also new to our efforts will be watching government affairs issues in your state and bring those to your attention and jumping in to assist when you need a hand tracking down your state representatives or finding you a state-based lobby firm for more urgent needs. We are looking forward to this new level of government affairs activities and as always, I will stay very involved in these efforts with our new staff. We’ll Be Looking For You in Chicago! It’s all hands-on deck for the International Forging Congress (IFC) 2022 – coming soon June 11-13 in downtown Chicago. FIA last hosted the event in 2008… and we tried to host in September 2020 (cancelled due to the pandemic). We thank our International ForgeNet partners for the chance to host a redo in 2022. My how the world has changed these last 33 years! We were quite open then to opening our plants to international guests and global travel was no problem. We don’t expect the same international attendance we had in 2008, even with the COVID virus seemingly under control in North America. The IFC Committee has created an event with both research and practical applications presentations – so we have something for everybody – including a nice group of exhibitors (see page 52 for more information). We need the membership and industry to come out full-force and attend! Please jump on our website and get yourself registered today. Hope to see you there! Best regards, James R. Warren

Let’s Count! Let’s Advocate! FIA has turned a new page by launching a Government Affairs department for the first time in our 109-year history (see page 6). Our first lobbying efforts with a professional firm came in the early 2000s with the Lauren Baker Group. In 2018 we moved to a larger bipartisan lobby firm, Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen &Thomas. More

recently, in early 2022 we hired our first staff person fully focused on government affairs. We’re proud of all our efforts these last 20 years, but the FIA board realized it was time to commit more resources to fighting unfair trade (dumped/country-subsidized) to continue to try to level the playing field for our North American forging producer members. What does this new effort look like? The effort still includes professional lobby firms assisting FIA on the ground floor in Washington D.C. The initial strategy also includes getting a better handle on all forms of data we need to support our position. This includes the launch of a new webpage featuring the ‘Forging Unfair Trade Tracking Center’ (forging.org), intended to briefly document incidences of dumped/subsidized forgings to help us amplify to lawmakers and administrators (USTR/Commerce Department) global forging producers/governments who unfairly trade. The identity of forgers submitting data will remain confidential; we are interested in tracking the incidences and reporting any patterns of unfair trading along with the company unfairly trading. Got Data? We need more. This includes 1) surveying members for forging capacity; 2) identifying all forgers in North America; 3) tracking imported forgings, and 4) capturing as many unfair incidences as possible. The department will also be responsible for investigating the creation of a financial ratios survey which is helpful for knowing where your company stands compared to other members on several standard metrics, such as sales per employee, inventory turns, hit-to-bid ratios, employee retention, energy usage, etc. With inflation and hyper-increases in steel costs, this survey would aid in demonstrating the members’ collective cost increases for items such as raw material and energy. Individually, the survey results can also be used as a basic snapshot for your company’s

President and CEO Forging Industry Association

PUBLISHER James R. Warren jwarren@forging.org MANAGING EDITOR Angela Gibian angela@forging.org Editorial Staff

Board of Directors

Antonio Alvarez Perry Bennett Peter Campbell

Mark Derry JimKravec Mike Morgus Scott Naar James Romeo

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Amanda Dureiko amanda@forging.org DESIGN Lorean Crowder lorean@forging.org

CHAIRMAN Dan Ulven VICE CHAIRMAN Chelsea Lantto

Mark Candy John Coward

FIA MAGAZINE | MAY 2022 1